This "Open Access" book investigates the legal reality of the church through a sociological lens and from the perspective of canon law studies, the discipline which researches the law and the legal structure of the Catholic Church. It introduces readers from various backgrounds to the sociology of canon law, which is both a legal and a theological field of study, and is the first step towards introducing a new subdiscipline of the sociology of canon law. As a theoretical approach to mapping out this field, it asks what theology and canon law may learn from sociology; it discusses the understanding of "law" in religious contexts; studies the preconditions of legal validity and effectiveness; and based on these findings it asks in what sense it is possible to speak of canon "law". By studying a religious order as its struggles to find a balance between continuity and change, this book also contributes to the debates on religious law in modernity and the challenges it faces from secular states and plural societies. This book is of interest to researchers and students of the sociology of law, legal studies, law and religion, the sociology of religion, theology, and religious studies. This is an open access book.

'Sacramentality' can serve as a category that helps to understand the performative power of religious and legal rituals. Through the analysis of 'sacraments', we can observe how law uses sacramentality to change reality through performative action, and how religion uses law to organise religious rituals, including sacraments. The study of sacramental action thus shows how law and religion intertwine to produce legal, spiritual, and other social effects. In this volume, Judith Hahn explores this interplay by interpreting the Catholic sacraments as examples of sacro-legal symbols that draw on the sacramental functioning of the law to provide both spiritual and legal goods to church members. By focusing on sacro-legal symbols from the perspective of sacramental theology, legal studies, ritual theory, symbol theory, and speech act theory, Hahn's  study reveals how law and religion work hand in hand to shape our social reality.

Natural law has long been considered the traditional source of Roman Catholic canon law. However, new scholarship is critical of this approach as it portrays the Catholic Church as static, ahistorical, and insensitive to cultural change. In its attempt to stem the massive loss of effectiveness being experienced by canon law, the church has to reconsider its theory of legal foundation, especially its natural law theory. Church Law in Modernity analyses the criticism levelled at the church and puts forward solutions for reconciling church law with modernity by revealing the historical and cultural authenticity of all law, and revising the processes of law making. In a modern church, there is no way of thinking of the law without the participation of the faithful in legislation. Judith Hahn therefore proposes a reformed legislative process for the church in the hope of reconciling the natural law origins of church law with a new, modern theology.

Die Studie ist eine Soziologie des roemisch-katholischen Kirchenrechts. Das Buch dokumentiert das Experiment, die kirchliche Rechtswirklichkeit aus Sicht der Kanonistik zu beschreiben, der Disziplin der Theologie, die sich der Rechtsgestalt der katholischen Kirche widmet. Die Kanonistik weiss rechtswissenschaftlich zu denken. Aktuell lernt sie rechtssoziologisch zu arbeiten. Die Schrift tragt daher zur Debatte um den Status der Soziologie in der Theologie bei.Als Rechtsordnung in der Spannung von Konstanz und Wandel reprasentiert das Kirchenrecht religioese Rechtsordnungen in der Moderne. Indem sie religioeses Recht im sakularen Staat und in der pluralen Gesellschaft erfasst, dient die Studie zugleich dem Verstandnis von Religiositat in Prozessen gesellschaftlicher Modernisierung. Sie unterstutzt die Ausbildung der Religionsrechtssoziologie als Segment des Forschungsfelds Recht und Religion.

The Roman Catholic Church has been criticized for many reasons, including its legalism. The growing aversion of church members to the law and the church hierarchy's juridified interpretation of Christianity is fueled by the language of ecclesiastical law (medieval legal Latin), which excludes most of the faithful from understanding and participating in debates on reforming the church's legal structure. In The Language of Canon Law, Judith Hahn explores the legal order of the Roman Catholic Church to better understand how the Roman Catholic Church communicates as a legal institution. She argues that the language of canon law reveals the political ideology of the church hierarchy, and she takes up the tools of language and law scholarship to examine and challenge that language. Examining the function of canon law language in ecclesiastical communications, she studies the character of canonical language, the grammar and terminology of canon law, and how canon law language makes use of linguistic tricks and techniques to create its typical sound. Further, Hahn discusses the comprehension difficulties that arise out of ambiguities in the law, out of transfer problems between legal and common language, and out of canon law's confusing mix of legal, doctrinal, and moral norms. An important contribution to law, language, theology, and sociology alike, this book proposes a rethinking of whether Latin is the appropriate language of a global and cross-cultural legal order like canon law, suggesting that the global church instead seek to develop a multi-language practice.

Natural law has long been considered the traditional source of Roman Catholic canon law. However, new scholarship is critical of this approach as it portrays the Catholic Church as static, ahistorical, and insensitive to cultural change. In its attempt to stem the massive loss of effectiveness being experienced by canon law, the church has to reconsider its theory of legal foundation, especially its natural law theory. Church Law in Modernity analyses the criticism levelled at the church and puts forward solutions for reconciling church law with modernity by revealing the historical and cultural authenticity of all law, and revising the processes of law making. In a modern church, there is no way of thinking of the law without the participation of the faithful in legislation. Judith Hahn therefore proposes a reformed legislative process for the church in the hope of reconciling the natural law origins of church law with a new, modern theology.